f13.net forums - Feb 6, 2007 - Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia

I know it's April already. I also know that most of you are not going to like this. I like it, and if you liked Atelier Iris then you probably would also. It has several improvements that make you not worry about the art reused from the Atelier Iris games, such as text that is readable and no fairy sidekicks. It also has a combat system that requires at least some thought. It's complicated and odd enough that I am not going to bother to explain it unless someone asks. Hell, even after reading the manual I still didn't understand it until after I started fighting.

The short summary is that your character, Lyner, is a young knight that finds out he has to save the world. Lyner's head is ably played by the head of Klein from Atelier Iris. Sent down to the Lower World to retrieve the artifact that can save his city of Platina (and thereby the world), he crashes his ship and proceeds to bumble around a world he does not understand. Along the way to save the world, he meets some weirdos, has funny conversations, learns to craft shit from monster drops, and enters a vaguely sexual relationship with a synthetic human. Whee!

I suppose that my biggest complaint at the moment is how any freeform element from the "alchemy" system has been removed. In the first Atelier Iris, you could make many things by substituting ingredients in known recipes. This was reduced quite a bit, to my dismay, in the sequel. In Ar tonelico you cannot substitute ingredients in the "grathmeld" system as far as I can tell, so I suppose one of the few places you can get anime art, engrish and a touch of sandbox has finally disappeared.

Also, it came with an art book.